What a year of tracking actually shows

A record does not change what happens. It changes what can be said about what happened, which turns out to matter in a setting where the entire consultation runs on the patient’s summary of the preceding weeks.

Without a record, the honest answer to how have things been is a general impression heavily weighted toward the last few days. With one, the answer is a specific count over a specific period, which is a different kind of input to a decision.

I used to say it had been fine, mostly. Now I can say which eleven days it wasn’t.

Illustrative composite

• Short beats thorough. The records people sustain for a year are the ones that take under a minute.
• Note the bad days rather than every day. Most of the useful signal is in the exceptions.
• Write what happened, not what you concluded about it. Conclusions age badly; observations do not.